"Fear of the future, lived through the past": Transitional justice in the wake of ethnic conflict.

Source: (2009) Research Brief. October. New York: International Center for Transitional Justice.

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to understanding the ways ethnic identities might matter for transitional justice—even when the justice in question is a response to clear-cut cases of identity-based violations, as in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Th e social dynamics of ethnic identities is a huge subject. Th is article narrows the issue by looking specifically at ethnic conflict. It surveys for a transitional justice audience
the key factors driving ethnic conflict, and describes some of the more well-known methods of addressing those factors. Th e goal is to adapt, for the purposes of transitional justice, what has been learned from the extensive body of existing research on ethnic conflict. (excerpt)